Our first typhoon

What a storm experience Glenda was.

We’ve all gone through many typhoons throughout our lives here in the Philippines. But I found this last one to be different. It was novel in many ways. And quite personal.

The advisories before and during the typhoon were very timely and accurate. PAGASA’s bulletins were spot-on. The local government units moved early to evacuate people from danger zones They had prepared food in the temporary shelters and made sure there were as few casualties as possible. In some areas, in fact, there were actually zero deaths. This is nothing short of amazing.

While I watched the news, I felt a sense of pride and optimism. Have we as a people finally learned how to cope with calamities by planning ahead? It seems we have. The gravity of the calamities we have been having recently must have done this. More and more, as we become better and better at this, we should be more adept at responding to the ravages of ever stronger typhoons and cyclones with the onset of climate change.

Meanwhile, for Lydia and me, it was our first typhoon experience in our new house. We were both excited but more anxious about how our newly constructed house made of 100-year-old recycled wood and a lot of glass windows would stand up to the predicted catastrophic winds that Glenda was going to unleash on a big portion of the country. I was not so worried about the rains. We had the foresight to build the house a meter above the ground. It would have to take much more than a monster typhoon like Ondoy for the floodwaters to come in.

The night before tropical cyclone Glenda hit Metro Manila, we hardly got any sleep. The otherwise sturdy house we had just built all of a sudden seemed fragile as we tried to imagine the possible impact Glenda would have. Would it survive Glenda intact?

Early morning on the 16th, the rains came. At about 7 a.m. the rains had abated a bit but were replaced by very strong winds blowing and causing all the trees in our garden and those of our neighbors on three sides of our property to sway wildly. The winds intensified even more and soon enough, we saw the trees bending to angles that were unbelievably dangerous and tenuous. Then we heard the sound of the breaking of whole branches amid the din of rain falling on our rooftop.

When I looked out the window of the second floor, I saw practically a whole tree from my neighbor’s yard fall and completely block my driveway. I quickly rushed out to see if my car had been hit. Luckily, the huge tree missed the car by about three feet.

Soon after, I saw a huge treetop fall near the temporary home of the construction workers on the other lot. They all rushed out shouting from their quarters and stood shivering in the rain. It wasn’t too long before Lydia invited them in to our property to give them shelter.

Meanwhile, in our house, we saw traces of water enter some of the frames of the glass windows. That was little, considering the storm was blasting the house with water at 180 KPH winds.

There was also the feeling that the second floor was vibrating a bit, but not enough to get us worried. 

Otherwise, the house was quite dry and comfortable. Despite the very strong winds that I thought would rattle the big glass panels of the dining area, it was unshaken and quiet. I sat by a sofa and looked out the glass panels. I spent some time sitting calmly and peacefully watching Glenda ravage our garden. Strangely, it was quite fascinating.

After around three hours or so of non-stop destructive gusts of wind, I felt Glenda weakening. We were coming close to the end of the typhoon.

Once again, we walked around the house to see if any new leaks had appeared. There were none. There were some bits of dust that appeared on the floor which must have been debris falling from joints, nooks and crannies because of the shaking earlier.

An architect I talked to a few days ago said that during an earthquake, a wooden structure generally had a better chance of remaining intact than one made of cement. Wood with steel frames to hold it up makes it a bit more pliant.

Also, a house with more windows can survive a typhoon better. When the wind is strong, simply open windows to ease the pressure by letting all that force simply pass through.

All throughout the storm, we felt safe and protected in a house that was not just elegant and pretty but seemed solid and sturdy. It was a home and a fortress that could withstand Mother Nature’s tantrums.

Expect stronger weather disturbances. Climate change is really upon is. And while an ever-increasing portion of humanity is already suffering from it, the world’s politicians still have yet to take serious, concrete actions to abate it.

Our house is made with recycled wood and is partly energized by solar panels. These were decisions we consciously made that ought to lessen our impact and carbon footprint on the environment.

After saying a silent prayer of thanks when the storm left, I quietly smiled, remembering the story of “The Three Little Pigs.” While our house was built with old wood and glass instead of brick and mortar, wolverine Glenda’s huffing and puffing still could not blow the house down.